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Happy As Lazzaro

Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Happy As Lazzaro image - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
NOW AVAILABLE TO OWN OR VIEW ON DEMAND
Happy As Lazzaro poster - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
Poetic and achingly beautiful, this is a film with a wry and wise vision. The best film I’ve seen this year, I do urge you to seek it out.
Mesmerising. An instant classic. Rohrwacher draws from the past (tapping into literature and folklore as well as film) to interrogate present conditions and future possibilities. This movie feels bracingly new and also like something that has been here forever. It has the urgency of a news bulletin and the authority of a classic. What makes this a great movie, though — a film that acquires new depths of emotion and meaning each time you see it — is the piercing clarity of Alice Rohrwacher’s vision.
Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Cast: Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, Alba Rohrwacher, Luca Chikovani, Tommaso Ragno, Sergi López, Natalino Balasso, Nicoletta Braschi
Duration: 127mins
Country of Origin: Italy
M
Violence
Poetic and achingly beautiful, this is a film with a wry and wise vision. The best film I’ve seen this year, I do urge you to seek it out.
Mesmerising. An instant classic. Rohrwacher draws from the past (tapping into literature and folklore as well as film) to interrogate present conditions and future possibilities. This movie feels bracingly new and also like something that has been here forever. It has the urgency of a news bulletin and the authority of a classic. What makes this a great movie, though — a film that acquires new depths of emotion and meaning each time you see it — is the piercing clarity of Alice Rohrwacher’s vision.

NOMINEE (x9) – 2019 ITALIAN ACADEMY AWARDS – incl. Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay & Cinematography
WINNER – 2018 CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – Best Screenplay
NOMINEE (x4) – 2018 EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS – Best Film, Director, Actress, Screenwriter
OFFICIAL SELECTION - BFI LONDON, CHICAGO, KARLOVY VARY & NEW YORK FILM FESTIVALS

Beloved by audiences and critics at Cannes (where it was awarded the Best Screenplay prize), Alice Rohrwacher’s beguiling film is an allegory of love, loss and compassion exploring the troubled soul of Italy.

t’s summer at Inviolata, an isolated rural estate, where an extended family of tobacco farmers toil under the rule of a domineering marchesa, and where the handsome and hard-working Lazzaro (captivating newcomer Adriano Tardiolo), a young man imbued with a saint-like innocence, is alternately adored and taken advantage of. When the marchesa’s self-absorbed son, Tancredi (Luca Chikovani) first visits the fields, he senses an opportunity, and embroils Lazzaro in an audacious plan that spirals out of control and throws the estate into a complicated chaos that takes everybody by surprise. 

Channelling the spirit of Pasolini, Rohrwacher’s fascinating, deeply affecting parable casts an ethereal, wondrous spell, and confirms her status as one of the most inventive and compelling voices in contemporary Italian cinema with this utterly transporting film experience.  

Happy As Lazzaro poster - a film by Alice Rohrwacher
NOW AVAILABLE TO OWN OR VIEW ON DEMAND